


To Love

by portraitofemmy



Category: Glee
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-21
Updated: 2012-12-21
Packaged: 2017-11-21 23:12:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/603121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/portraitofemmy/pseuds/portraitofemmy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Blaine discovers the four different meanings of love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Love

The language classes offered at Dalton weren’t the like the ones at other schools. There were no Spanish or German classes. Those languages were considered plebeian and useless by the Dalton elite, languages their children would have no need to learn. French was offered, but only after a somewhat rebellious petitioning campaign by some of the students. It was still considered one of the least useful classes taught at Dalton.   
  
Instead, students were encouraged to take Latin (the language of medicine and law), Greek (the language of western history) or Chinese (quickly becoming the language of business). Blaine’s father, of course, had wanted him to take Latin. Cooper had taken French in high school, but that was Cooper. The rules that had applied to Cooper growing up never seemed to apply to Blaine. Still, Blaine hadn’t wanted to take Latin, didn’t want to give his father an excuse to push him into a career as a doctor or lawyer.   
  
No, instead, Blaine took Greek. He didn’t imagine it’d be a very helpful in the long run, knowing a language that was only used in college classrooms, but it would get his dad off his back. It might even appease him enough to actually be interested in the a cappella group Blaine also signed up for. (Spoiler: It didn’t.)  
  
So, Blaine took a year and a half of Greek classes. It was a difficult subject, but Blaine was smart, and resourceful. He knew how to learn, and knew how to get help when he couldn’t understand something on his own. Eventually, when Kurt came to Dalton, Blaine wished briefly that he’d pushed more and taken French, just to have another class with Kurt. Then when Kurt and Blaine became _Kurt and Blaine_ ,  he wished taken French so he could understand what Kurt was saying when he spoke it because, wow.  
  
He’d thought about taking French when he transferred, but he was already getting so much trouble from his parents for following Kurt (no one seemed to believe him when he said he was doing it for himself) that he figured maybe he should branch out a bit, and try to make more friends. Mostly, Blaine forgot about Greek, until his spanish class started covering the verb “amar”, and then he found himself explaining to Mike that Greek had three different roots for the verb “to love.” It had been fun, for a bit, to know something Mike didn’t, and that had been that.   
  
Still, the idea of love, of different kinds of love, was something that stuck with Blaine far beyond the hallowed halls of Dalton.   
  
  
  
_Eros_  
  
The first kind of love Blaine thought he really understood was, Eros- passionate love. Eros, for Blaine, was Kurt. He was beginning to think it would always be Kurt. He’d loved Kurt, known he’d loved Kurt, for an entire summer, for months, through an entire musical production. But being close, being… physical, had changed Blaine’s entire perception about what being in love meant.  
  
He’d expected to feel closer to Kurt after. Closer didn’t even begin to cut it. Kurt was distracting, in his increasingly tight wardrobe choices yes, but also just being himself. Blaine alternated between staring absently into space dreaming about Kurt’s legs in those pants, and staring at Kurt completely enchanted by watching him talk.   
  
Loving Kurt now was something he did with all of himself. He did with his eyes when he looked at him. He did with his hand in Kurt’s hand, whenever they could, wherever felt safe. He did it with all the support he could muster, researching and helping with NYADA applications and sectional song selections. He did it with his voice when they sang together in black and white for christmas.  
  
And he tried his best to show it, with a little homemade ring in a box.  Buying Kurt a gift was always a daunting task, because what he wanted he would get himself, and at a lower price than you’d be able to find it. Ultimately, all Blaine could think to give was himself, a promise of himself for times to come. The year was half over already, Kurt would be gone so soon, and all he wanted was to make sure Kurt had something of him to hold on to.   
  
He wanted to make sure Kurt knew he that he’d always be what Blaine thought of when he thought of being in love.   
  
  
  
_Philia_  
  
The idea of Philia, or the love in friendship, was always a bit fuzzier to Blaine. He’d had friends early in high school, before he came out. He’d even had friends at Dalton, fellow Warblers and classmates alike. He’d enjoyed their company, but he never felt close to them. Not until Kurt, and what he’d felt for Kurt had changed rapidly.  
  
He didn’t think he’d find close friendship, the kinds of friends you could love, at McKinley. He knew Kurt loved his friends there, but the members of New Directions hadn’t exactly welcomed him with open arms.   
  
He couldn’t pin point the moment when Mike Chang became one of his best friends. It just sort of happened. West Side Story probably had something to do with it. So did the fact that, somehow, Blaine ended up being one of the best dancers in the group, and they’d end up dancing together a lot. But Blaine really liked Mike, in a way that was outside simply being people who often occupied the same space.  
  
Mike was quiet, so it seemed to Blaine like a lot of people over looked him. He was also fiercely intelligent and incredibly talented, which Blaine supposed would be intimidating. He liked it though. He liked talking to Mike in a completely different way that he liked talking to Kurt. Sometimes Blaine thought Mike might understand him better than Kurt did, though what Kurt didn’t understand he pushed through with a astonishing amount of love that still left Blaine breathless.   
  
That didn’t change the fact that sometimes it felt like Mike understood Blaine’s family issues better than Kurt ever would. Blaine was glad of that, really, glad of Kurt’s wonderful family and supporting father. But Mike understood the pressure and the fear of being a disappointment.   
  
He watched Mike fight for the chance to pursue his dreams, and was silently grateful that Cooper had already fought that battle for him. True, his parents would never love the idea of Blaine being a performer, but they’d learned with his brother what denying it could cost them. Instead, they were simply indifferent.  
  
So Blaine and Mike studied together, and danced together. Mike asked for Blaine’s input when he had Tina had a (large by their standards, small by everyone else’s) fight, and Blaine ran his christmas gift idea by Mike. He began to think that, if the title of Best Friend didn’t belong to Kurt, it’d belong to Mike. It didn’t make him feel bad, though, because he knew Mike would understand that. He suspected Mike might feel the same way about Tina.   
  
Still, it didn’t occur to Blaine how much he really loved Mike until he was laid up in bed with an eyepatch. The drugs were making everything fuzzy, and the feeling of betrayal was making everything inside him hurt. Kurt was wonderful of course, did everything he couldn’t, but he couldn’t live with Blaine, couldn’t be there all the time to keep him company.  
  
Blaine wasn’t expect anyone to come see him that day, with everyone being preoccupied with Regionals. Finn and Rachel had already made their obligatory visit, and Kurt was spending his mandatory Friday night at home, and really, who else would come?  
  
Apparently, Mike would.   
  
Blaine was fuzzy enough on medication that he didn’t remember much of Mike’s visit. There was definitely something about a Spanish teacher, something about Coach Sue being pregnant (which was a terrifying thought). Looking back on it, all Blaine really remembered was the warmth of realizing that someone who wasn’t his boyfriend went out of their way to check on him.   
  
And suddenly Philia made sense. Because Blaine didn’t feel about Mike the way he felt about Kurt, but he did loved him.   
  
  
  
_Storge_  
  
Understanding Storge, familial love, and experiencing it were too different things for Blaine.   
  
He knew, intellectually, that his parents loved him. They fed him and clothed him and payed for expensive private school to keep him safe when he needed, and let him transfer when he said he needed that. It was easier to feel it from his mother, who was slowly but surely making an effort to get to know Kurt. With his father it was harder, when so often it felt like he was looking through Blaine rather than at him. Still, he’d stopped actively trying to change Blaine, so that was… progress.   
  
Still, it didn’t feel like the kind of love Blaine would associate with the word. He saw love like that every day at the Hudson-Hummel house, saw how easy it could be. Kurt’s family loved each other in a way that made it look easy. As if loving like that was a natural state of being.   
  
Blaine loved watching Kurt and his father interact. Burt was so easily accepting, never so much batting an eyelash as Kurt gushed about Liz Taylor jewelry or complained about poorly dressed news anchors. He teased Kurt about his eccentricities in a casual way that Blaine’s own parents were far too cautious for. As much as Blaine was glad that Kurt had that, made him ache a bit with envy.  
  
Not that Blaine had ever felt anything but welcome in Kurt’s house. (Well, maybe in the early days when he was doing stupid things like waking up hung over in Kurt’s bed then telling Burt to talk about to his son about sex.) He actually got along really well with Kurt’s dad, once they reach an understanding. They both loved Kurt, and that was enough. Carole, who had the added benefit of only really getting to know Kurt as a mostly grown man and therefore was spared some of the normal parental hang ups, went out of her way to make sure Blaine felt welcome.   
  
As much as Blaine loved being welcomed into Kurt’s family, treasured it even, it was still Kurt’s family. It wasn’t a thing he could claim yet, could grab and call his own.   
  
The Cooper was suddenly plowing his way back into Blaine’s life with all the subtly of a terribly acted steamroller.  
  
It was always hard to figure out how to take Cooper. As a child Blaine had adored him, followed his every move, wanted to be with him all the time (like any high schooler would want their kid brother following them everywhere). Then Blaine’s life had kind of fallen apart and Cooper had been too busy with his life in California for much more than a phone call.  
  
It had been easy to let the love Blaine had felt for his brother turn to resentment. All the good things about his brother, the things Blaine had loved about him, had been easily pushed aside until his memory of Cooper was only of him being someone else who was disappointed in Blaine. Cooper’s visit to Glee hadn’t done much to change that perception.   
  
Honestly, Blaine would have let Cooper walk right back out of his life again. He’d have the scars from it, another set of memories to add to the pile of not being good enough, but he’d have let Cooper go off to his Michael Bay movie and that would have been that. Except Blaine had Kurt, and Kurt didn’t let Blaine get hurt, even if it was Blaine himself doing the hurting.   
  
So Kurt prodded and poked gently, figured out what was wrong, and figured out a way to fix it. Suddenly, Blaine had a brother again. Not just in the theoretical sense of someone who shared his DNA, but in a real sense. They talked on the phone at least once a week, and slowly they were becoming more than brothers. They were becoming friends.  
  
Blaine suspected Cooper didn’t know much more about really being a family than Blaine did. Still, together they were trying. Cooper stayed on the phone with Blaine most of the night after Blaine and Kurt had their first big fight. (Cooper seemed to genuinely like Kurt, wardrobe jabs aside, but he was still nice enough to threaten all kinds of harm if Kurt broke Blaine’s heart.)  
  
It wasn’t until after Nationals, when Blaine called to tell Cooper about the win, that it really started to sink in. His brother was more genuinely excited for Blaine about a high school singing competition than Blaine could remember his parents ever being about anything. Cooper had him describing every detail of the championship, and they had fun for a while making fun of some of the teams New Directions had competed against.  
  
After he hung up it occurred to him that he and Cooper still had a chance to be a real family.   
  
  
_Agape_  
  
For the longest time, Blaine didn’t believe Agape, unconditional self-sacrificing love, existed alone. Once he knew he loved someone, in whatever way, he loved them with all of himself. He’d always be willing to take hits for the people he loved. That’s just who he was.  
  
It would take years, but the day would come when it would make sense. The day would come when Blaine would find himself sitting in the quiet stillness of a pastel room, holding to his chest the most important thing in the world. He’d hold the precious bundle of his daughter to his heart, and he’d feel absolutely floored by the completeness of his love for her.  
  
She’d whine softly in her sleep, and he’d coo gentle meaningless words comfort as he cradled her. It wouldn’t be until that moment that Blaine would really understand what unconditional love was. She could do anything, choose anything, be anything and he would love her so much it filled him up. He would do anything, give anything, to make sure she had the best life she could.  
  
It would make him angry sometimes, at his own parents, make it even harder for him to understand why they’d treated him the way they had. But mostly it would just make him thankful, for this beautiful bundle of life he’d been given to nurture, and for the loving partner he had to raise her with. He knew his daughter would never know what it was like to grow up in a family where she didn’t know if she was loved.   
  
Blaine did put his whole heart into loving people, it was true. But the day would come when Blaine would cradle his baby girl to his chest, singing her softly to sleep, and truly understand unconditional love.


End file.
